God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

  Image by author using ChatGPT Marian apparition stories need to be taken seriously. They have profound global influences. They always present an exquisite challenge to the Catholic Church, which it can hardly refuse. On a scale of 1 to 10 measuring unexplainable paranormal phenomena, they are usually a 10, almost equal to a ship full of little green men landing on the White House lawn. Since this is an article and not a book, I will focus on one apparition in this post, the appearance of “Mary” to a poor, unlettered, obscure Nahua Indian who was baptized by Spanish priests with the name Juan Diego. Most of the descriptive narrative below is taken from Ethel Cook Eliot’s contribution to the book listed in the sources below. The Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe On Saturday, December 9, 1531, Juan Diego left his village at daybreak to attend the celebration of Mass in another village. As he passed the hill called Tepeyac, he was startled by the unaccustomed sound of birds sing...

Sources: Wayne Weible,  Medjugorje the Message , Paraclete Press, 1989   and  Medjugorje the Mission , Paraclete Press, 1994,  www.medjugorje.com .   Why investigate Mary? I want to look at the phenomenon from all sides, pro and con, but first I want to emphasize that these events, which have taken place since the sixteenth century, are Earth shaking, global, and, for better or worse, paranormal/spiritual in nature. I do not believe for a second that they are hoaxes. The apparitions are possibly cunning deceptions with victims maybe, but not hoaxes. I do not intend to attack or deprecate the Catholic Church in these posts. The Church has done its best to examine these wonders and substantiate or dismiss them. Furthermore, it’s very easy for everyone on Earth who is not a Catholic to compartmentalize away these apparitions and just pretend they never happened. Don’t read about them. Don’t think about them. We do that with things that are...